Too Beautiful to Dance Read online

  TOO BEAUTIFUL

  TO DANCE

  Diana Appleyard

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Also by Diana Appleyard

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781407094472

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DANCE

  A BLACK SWAN BOOK: 9780552773058

  First publication in Great Britain

  Black Swan edition published 2007

  Copyright © Diana Appleyard 2007

  Diana Appleyard has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  The Random House Group Limited makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in our books are made from trees that have been legally sourced from well-managed and credibly certified forests. Our paper procurement policy can be found on www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Typeset in 11/13pt Melior by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire.

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  To Beth and Charlotte, despite their constant

  reminders of my losing battle with age

  Diana Appleyard is a writer, broadcaster and freelance journalist. She worked as a BBC Education Correspondent before deciding to give up her full-time job to work from home, a decision which formed the basis for her first novel, Homing Instinct. She lives with her husband Ross and their two daughters in Scotland.

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Also by Diana Appleyard

  HOMING INSTINCT

  A CLASS APART

  OUT OF LOVE

  EVERY GOOD WOMAN DESERVES A LOVER

  PLAYING WITH FIRE

  and published by Black Swan

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my publisher, Linda Evans, and agent, Sheila Crowley, for their constancy and support with a book which has taken a while to deliver! Thanks also to Tess and Harold for the loan of their beautiful house near Fowey where I could absorb the landscape and enjoy many windy walks in the mind of Sara. My family, for putting up with me being away with reasonable grace, and my mother and sisters for being at the end of the telephone line. The publicity team at Transworld are always terrific, and I would also like to send thanks to the newspapers and magazines who support my writing and short stories, with particular regard to the Femail team at the Daily Mail, especially Rachael.

  Chapter One

  ‘Perhaps you should have left him years ago.’

  Sara hesitated, secateurs poised to snip off the withered, paper-thin petals clinging to what had been a most beautiful pale pink rose. In death, its colour had faded to the sepia of parchment, and even as the words circled lazily around her head, she thought how odd that something so lustrously beautiful could turn, with such apparent rapidity, into such decay. She snipped, decisively, and the dying rose fell to the earth.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. There was the money, after all.’

  Catherine, a large hat like a raffia wheel keeping the sun off a face which had recently undergone a chemical peel and was still therefore at the rather delicate stage, chewed the end of her sunglasses. ‘A fatuous comment. And one I know you do not mean. Don’t even attempt to fib to me, Sara Louise Atkinson. I know you inside out.’

  She leant back into the rickety deckchair, tapping in mid air a critical foot encased in the latest wedge-heeled sandals, observing her oldest friend through narrowed eyes.

  Sara straightened, her right hand pressing against the stiffness in the small of her back, rolling her neck as she did so and feeling a satisfying click. The gate definitely needed painting. Pale blue, she thought. Pale blue, to reflect the sky on a good day.

  ‘I’m not ready . . .’ Not ready to what, she thought? Not ready to discuss the fact that she, too, had been effectively deadheaded? She smiled to herself. She liked the analogy. There was no room for sentimentality or self-pity. Not here.

  She took a long breath. ‘I’m not ready,’ she said, slowly, ‘to come up with any form of judgement. I’m sorry. I know you want me to feel angry and betrayed but I don’t honestly know what I feel, and I cannot look upon anything at the moment as a certainty. It’s as if . . .’

  ‘As if what?’

  ‘As if I’m not really here.’

  She looked up into the clear blue sky, as, high above her, a rook wheeled towards the tall fir trees beyond the gate, cawing loudly to its mate, heading for home at the end of another busy twig-gathering day. For a startling moment, she thought she might cry. Cry now, why? When she’d driven all the way here and unpacked most of the boxes and looked out over the sea from the tiny window of her bedroom without a trace of self-pity or even sadness, simply a steely determination to live, not to go under, not to be anything that anyone might expect her to be at this particular moment in time?

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Catherine leant forward, as if to get up, but found she could not rise with any form of swiftness or elegance from the unwieldy chair.

  ‘Don’t you have anything more sodding comfortable?’

  Sara laughed. ‘I paid two pounds fifty for that at the local shop. Don’t mock.’

  ‘You were robbed.’ Catherine floundered for a moment, her knees, in smart white cropped trousers, waving perilously. For a glorious mom
ent Sara thought she might go over backwards. But Catherine had not survived two marriages and numerous abrupt changes in fortune to have her dignity compromised by cheap garden furniture. With a graceful leap, she landed on her feet. Behind her, the deckchair sighed into a collapsed heap of stripy material and awkward wooden elbows. Sara’s Labrador, Hector, asleep in the grass, awoke and regarded it with mild surprise. Did it need investigating? Mostly harmless, he decided, and sank his head back upon his blonde front paws. His chocolate brown eyes watched Sara closely, awaiting a movement which might herald the dinner his internal clock informed him was long overdue.

  ‘I need a drink.’ Catherine set off towards the open front door. Hector followed her path with mortified eyes. Right direction, wrong person.

  ‘There’s white wine in the fridge,’ Sara called, to her retreating back. Stretching, she pressed the back of her soil-stained hand to her mouth, feeling the warmth of the sun deep within her skin. After just a week at the cottage, her skin was beginning to freckle. Freckles, or the first signs of age spots? Who was there to care? She closed her eyes, briefly, the setting sun luminous behind her eyelids.

  ‘You’ll go quite loony here,’ Catherine said, minutes later, pressing an ice-cold glass of wine into her hand.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there’s nothing to do. What will you do all day? I’m so worried you’re going to be lonely.’

  ‘There’s everything to do. That’s what I like about . . . all this.’ Sara gestured around the garden. It wasn’t sufficiently organized to be called a garden yet, simply a patch of ragged grass with the odd ancient rose poking its gnarled head above the tallest weeds by the low stone wall at the front of the cottage, the sad, shrivelled remains of last year’s blooms hanging forlornly from spindly stems. It had been a proper garden, though, once, she thought. When the cottage was loved.

  It had lain practically derelict and forgotten for almost two years, the estate agent had told her. Before that, it had been owned by a rather batty old man who had kept himself busy, apparently, collecting old newspapers and empty tins of baked beans which he stored in piles in the narrow corridors and behind closed doors. He had died here, alone, and the cottage had stood empty ever since. Before his death, during his tenure, both the garden and cottage had fallen into severe disrepair. The cottage dated back to the early seventeenth century, and Sara guessed it must have been at least fifty years since anyone had done anything to repair or even paint it. It had simply crouched into the hillside, prey to the vagaries of storms, sea mists and the high winds buffeting the south Cornish coast, waiting patiently for rescue.

  When she had pushed open the door, just under three months ago at the beginning of January, the air within musty and stale, there was a palpable sense of loneliness and death which quite appealed to her. They were two injured souls, the cottage and she. She would be needed, here.

  Once contracts had been exchanged, the estate agent, a friendly young man called David, said he knew of someone in the village, a mile down the road, who could help to tidy up the garden for her, but she said no – she wanted to do it herself. She had always enjoyed the feeling of being tired out from hard work in the fresh air, and relished the challenge of rolling up her sleeves and getting on with something she could do. The doing was all.

  In London, their ‘garden’ had consisted of a long, narrow roof terrace with smart teak decking, decorated with ornamental steel grey metallic pots containing exotic and dangerously spiky species of cacti – they required nothing more strenuous than the odd tweak here and there. Matt at the time was going through a minimalist de-clutter phase, and Emily remarked it was a bit like trying to sunbathe within a surreal pinball machine.

  They had once had a big garden – well, big for London – when the children were small and they were in funds, living in an end-of-terrace Edwardian house, facing the common, in Wandsworth. Enclosed by a lovely high crumbling red brick wall, it was overgrown and wild, a secret garden. But with two young children and working part-time for Matt as his PA, Sara hadn’t had the time or energy to bring it under control, and the wild brambles tapped on the kitchen window, a living, growing reproach to her neglect. Buddleia, which she hated – she knew this was irrational, but she always thought of it as a very common plant – ran riot, and the briars choked the roses. Then, once both children were at school all day and she had a little more time to try to bring the garden to heel, they had yet another financial crisis and Matt moved them on. What equity they had streamed into the business to keep it afloat, and they decamped to a rented, run-down three-storey town house, which had previously been lived in by students, in a far less fashionable area of London, with only a small paved courtyard as an apology for a garden. She did not reproach Matt for the abrupt downturn in fortune as she knew well by now that running your own business was almost inevitably a rollercoaster. He was doing his best, working himself into the ground, and success, he promised her, was just around the corner.

  When the girls were nineteen and sixteen, he finally hit the jackpot. After years of highs, lows and near bankruptcy, he had pulled in a number of big contracts and was in a position to be able to float the company to bring in new investment. A year after the flotation, he had had an offer from a much bigger media conglomerate. After long and painful negotiations, during which time Sara was seriously concerned for his health, such was the stress as they picked over every tiny detail, they agreed he would stay on as managing director, while they became the majority share holder. The initial cash windfall – a third of the overall sale price of the company – meant they could move out of the narrow town house, wave goodbye to the crack dealers at the end of the road, and usher in a new life in a smart penthouse apartment by the river. Matt felt the move was more than justified by such Herculean effort and stress. It should have meant a time of celebration for Sara, and would have been so, undoubtedly, if only she had not hated the apartment on sight. It had simply never felt like home. She felt uncomfortable, inappropriate, set against its sleek contemporary lines with its immaculate gleaming stainless steel kitchen. She would have far preferred a house in the country, something like an old rectory with a big garden, but Matt said he would hate the commute and he needed to stay in town, for now. So Sara put her dreams for a peaceful, rural life on hold. When he retired from the company, she told herself, in five or so years’ time. Then they could have the life Matt so richly deserved. Travelling, gardening, theatre trips, reading in the sun – growing comfortably older together. In time, there would be grandchildren, an extended family. A new life, the next phase.

  ‘Thanks.’ She took the glass of wine from Catherine, and ran her finger over the icy, beaded exterior.

  ‘That fridge is bloody awful. You must let me help you . . . we can have a lovely day tomorrow buying things for the home.’

  Sara smiled at her, shaking her head. ‘The fridge came with the house. There weren’t any relatives, so everything was just left. And I can’t afford to replace it at the moment.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just chuck it out? You really should have. Honestly, Sara, I can’t believe you can’t afford . . .’

  ‘It works.’ She shrugged. ‘You should have seen it before I set to work with the cream cleaner. I quite enjoyed it, actually. It was nice to make a difference.’ She sat down carefully, facing Catherine, on the low stone wall in front of the cottage. Her eyes half-closed against the setting sun, she squinted over her friend’s shoulder at the faded white façade of the little house, the exterior paint cracked and chipped to reveal bare patches of old stone, like the missing pieces of a jigsaw. The white-painted window frames were visibly rotting, with jagged splinters and gaping holes, which was presumably why the wind had howled through the house when she first came to view, back in January. She would need to replace them, no doubt, and added them to her mental list of tasks. So much to do. The thought pleased her.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’

  ‘I’m just thinking how far I hav
e to go.’

  ‘I think you’ve gone quite far enough. It took me seven hours to drive here. There’s not even a railway station for forty miles. There’s an understandable need to escape, darling, and there’s being deliberately perverse at the expense of the poor souls who don’t want to lose you completely. This is practically a different time zone.’

  ‘You sound like my mother. I know it’s remote. It’s perfect.’

  ‘How will you see the girls? I can’t see either of them here,’ Catherine added beadily. ‘It’s not exactly spacious, is it? Hardly what they’re used to.’

  ‘Lottie’s coming down at the beginning of next week. She’s been staying with Mum while I – get things organized. I don’t know about Emily. She’s so busy with her new job . . . and she’s not really—’

  ‘Talking to you?’ Catherine jumped in. That wasn’t what Sara had been about to say, but she let it pass.

  ‘That won’t last, you know that,’ Catherine continued with some satisfaction. ‘It’s just petulance. She expected you to do the “normal” thing and hang onto the apartment while Matt had to move out into a flat or something. You were the injured party, after all – why shouldn’t you keep that lovely place? Then you could have indulged in intense retail therapy with her in tow, and wallow in all the material benefits of guilt alimony. Christ, darling, it’s no more than you deserved. She could hardly have expected you to bury yourself in this –’ she searched for the least offensive adjective she could find – ‘eccentric cottage without even a mobile signal for comfort. This,’ she said, looking about the tiny garden with thinly veiled distaste, ‘is the domestic equivalent of a hair shirt. I wouldn’t have dreamt of buying somewhere poky like this. He’ll think he’s won, you know. You’ve made it far too easy for him.’

  ‘You’ve been divorced too often.’ Sara smiled, un-offended. She had known Catherine too long to be upset by her astonishing lack of tact. ‘And is that really the “normal” thing to do for a wife who is no longer required? To seek vengeance by effectively squatting in the former family home?’